Generic Company Place Holder Recollect Desktop Standard Edition

Desktop search utilities (like Copernic)
are a great way to find files that may be buried somewhere in your
PC-as long as you're looking for a file that's compatible with your
search program. But what if the information you're looking for is
in an image or a scanned file? You might be out of luck-unless you
have Recollect Desktop. This application can analyze and search the
contents of what it calls "unstructured documents." These include
scanned files, e-mails, PDFs, and TIFFs, while making sense of
misspelled and run-together words.

I tested the $100 Standard Edition of Recollect Desktop; the
company also offers a $150 Professional version. The software's
interface is all business (read: bland), and using it is not always
intuitive. Luckily, the Getting Started guide provides clear
directions that walk you through the setup process, even if they
don't always make it easy to understand why you're doing what
you're doing. (What you are doing, it turns out, is specifying
which directories on your computer you'd like Recollect Desktop to
monitor and index files from.)

Once the initial indexing is complete--and it's a pretty quick
process--Recollect Desktop goes to work finding your files. It
conducts "fuzzy" searches, allowing the application to find
documents and files containing certain words, even when the words
are spelled wrong. In my tests, the application's search results
were quick and mostly impressive.

The Standard Edition is designed for home users who have a lot
of paper documents that they need to manage electronically. If you
scan paperwork such as school records, tax papers, or insurance
forms, Recollect Desktop can help you keep track of it all. The
Professional version is designed for companies that do the same
thing in their business.

Recollect Desktop isn't always pretty or easy to use, but it
does what it's supposed to do well.

Note: The trial version is limited to 15 days
or 2,500 pages, whichever comes first. This link takes you to the
vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the
software.

--Liane Cassavoy

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